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Fun Facts
Did You Know?
Green-winged teal — Similar size, but the green-wing lacks the blue wing patch. At rest, the male green-wing has a cinnamon-chestnut head with an iridescent green ear stripe — completely different from the gray head and white crescent of the male blue-wing. In flight, the absence of blue on the upper wing separates the species cleanly
If This Animal Could Talk...
"Watch closely, respect my space, and let my habitat explain the rest of the story."
Every fall in Louisiana, the first serious cold front of September pushes a wave of small ducks out of the sky and into every shallow marsh, flooded field, and managed impoundment in the state. These are not the mallards and gadwalls of the main duck season. These arrive early, leave early, and have already been in Venezuela by the time most hunters are pulling their waders out of storage.
The blue-winged teal (Spatula discors) is the earliest migrant in the duck world — first south in fall, last north in spring — and it is the reason Louisiana has a September teal season.
A Few More Facts
How they hunt and forage: Blue-winged teal are surface feeders and do not up-end as frequently as pintails or mallards. They feed by swimming forward with the head partly submerged, gleaning seeds and invertebrates from the water surface and shallow mud at the margins of marshes and ponds. The diet shifts significantly by season. Breeding birds eat mostly invertebrates — aquatic insects, crustaceans, clams — for protein to support egg production and early chick growth. During spring migration the diet is roughly 65 percent invertebrates and 35 percent seeds. In fall and winter the diet becomes more variable and opportunistic, shifting toward seeds and plant matter as invertebrate abundance declines.
Live birth or eggs? no
When young are born: Some young birds that appear in the September season in Louisiana have already seen South America and returned — a round trip of several thousand miles in their first year of life.
Photo Gallery
What Is the Blue-Winged Teal Often Confused With?
The blue-wing is small — similar in size to the green-winged teal, which is to say noticeably, obviously smaller than a mallard and built low to the water with a compact body and large head. The drake in breeding plumage has a dark blue-gray head with a bold white crescent in front of the eye — the field mark that gets the most attention at rest because it reads clearly at moderate distance. The body is cinnamon-buff with dense dark spots throughout. There is a white patch on the rear flank just forward of the black tail. The bill is black. The legs and feet are yellow-orange.
Drag the handle left and right to compare Blue-Winged Teal side by side with the species it gets mistaken for most.
Open the visual comparison tool
Blue-Winged Teal vs. American Wigeon
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Accessibility
Accessibility
Blue-winged teal are available for observation during the brief September window when they move through North Louisiana. Managed impoundments with drawn-down water levels and exposed mudflats are the places to be — the same conditions that attract green-wings in winter attract blue-wings in September on their way south.
Vehicle-based observation from levee roads at WMA impoundments is practical during the September movement. The birds are small and often difficult to identify from a distance without binoculars that allow the blue wing patch to be seen. Spotting scopes are useful when birds are on open mudflats at distance.
Morning is better than afternoon — blue-wings that arrived overnight will be actively feeding at first light, and the calm morning conditions that follow a cold front provide better observation than the wind that often picks up by midday.
The male's thin tsee-tsee whistle is soft and may be inaudible at road distance in windy conditions. In calm morning conditions, a concentration of feeding blue-wings produces a background of these calls that confirms the species before visual identification is possible. Play the call on a bird identification app before heading out — it is distinctive but quiet, and knowing it in advance is the difference between recognizing it and missing it.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Does Blue-Winged Teal live in North Louisiana?
Yes. By the time they appear in a North Louisiana marsh in September they have logged more international travel than most people accumulate in a decade. In North Louisiana. North Louisiana is not the core blue-wing habitat in the state — the coastal marshes and agricultural areas of southwest Louisiana are where the survey numbers are highest and where the big September concentrations occur
How do you identify Blue-Winged Teal?
The blue-wing is small — similar in size to the green-winged teal, which is to say noticeably, obviously smaller than a mallard and built low to the water with a compact body and large head
What does Blue-Winged Teal eat?
Blue-winged teal are surface feeders and do not up-end as frequently as pintails or mallards. They feed by swimming forward with the head partly submerged, gleaning seeds and invertebrates from the water surface and shallow mud at the margins of marshes and ponds
Is Blue-Winged Teal dangerous to people?
Blue-wings breed primarily in the Prairie Pothole Region of Canada and the northern United States, with the Dakotas and the prairie provinces of Canada the core of production. A small number nest in coastal Louisiana and Texas
